Good Monday evening 🙂 Nea

You’re welcome.

It takes only a second or 2 to say “hi”, and 2-3 seconds to say “hello”, and very little energy to pronounce either word, less than a calorie 🤔.

But that’s not the issue. I imagine that your husband fears that if he says “hi”, your father will not say hi back, and instead will take that tiny greeting as the first step in a multiple- steps submission-humiliation process, and only when the process is completed-to your father’s satisfaction- your father will eventually reward him.

You wrote, “I just keep wondering whether there could be a little room for grace or flexibility”-

You wrote this in regard to your husband, not in regard to your father.

You’re not wondering if your father could show grace or flexibility, do you?

In a power-over pattern of behavior, grace and flexibility are treated as weaknesses to be used, reciprocate. appreciated or reciprocated.

“Their relationship was good before all of this.”-

I imagine it looked good from the outside, and it felt genuine on the part of your husband (who lost his parents young), but for someone with your father’s history and pattern of behavior (as you described at length in now 11 pages), it was likely performative rather than genuine.

Meaning he felt good about how the relationship made him look (like a good, caring and generous father-in- law), not that he felt genuinely connected and close to your husband.

I’d like to add to this reply a bit later.

🌿 Anita

* edit (1st post this eve): … grace and flexibility are treated as weaknesses to be used, not appreciated or reciprocated.

Hi Nea

I’m glad to read that you’re having some happy moments with Maya and your husband, despite the worries. 😊

I can understand why the situation is making you feel so anxious and feeling a need to talk about it. Even though your husband needs a bit of a break from talking about it, you can share your feelings about it all here when you want to.🩵

It’s never easy to hear those words. 🫂

It’s a really intense time for mothers having a new baby. It’s a real shame that it’s not a relaxed environment for you.

I don’t know what it is about families and babies. Somehow it’s just like funerals. That’s when all the drama comes out of the woodwork. I can’t really go into the details here.🤦‍♀️

Yeah, I imagine you’re really feeling stuck in the middle of it all with everything unresolved?

It seems especially difficult because you’re staying there. You can’t necessarily handle things in an ideal way because I’m guessing there are some cultural rules about staying in someone’s home? In my culture, there is at least.

I wouldn’t really recommend what I did for that reason. I can’t really talk about the details publicly, but if you want to send me an email, I could explain there. No pressure, it’s up to you. 🩵

tbthrowaway64@gmail.com

I would just to try and keep things as calm as possible and figure the rest out later once you’ve moved out. What do you think?

Unfortunately, you can’t control what others choose to do. It would be nice to wave a wand and everyone magically behaves. 🪄

It took me some time to come to terms with that people were just set in their ways and handled things a lot differently than I would. Families are messy sometimes. 🩵

A nap would be super helpful if you get a chance, when someone else watches Maya. Naps were key for me. Honestly, the family drama around a new baby and conflict with partners that occurs then really took a toll for me and I ended up taking antidepressants to help calm my feelings down a bit. I wrote here when I was going through it. Everyone was really nice and supportive. 🙏

It sounds like your husband might be stressed by this situation too and he “copes” by not talking about it. It’s really difficult when you have different needs. But you are just different people and that is okay.

In my country, it would be extremely rude to ignore someone as a guest in their own house, so I can understand why you would like your husband to say hello. At least he’s thinking about it, even if he is changing his mind. Hopefully, he’ll come around in his own time.

Do you think a discussion like your husband wants is likely to happen? Or not? How do you think your father and your husband would react?

Sorry, I totally missed or forgot what the argument was initially about with your father and husband. I seem to remember your father started it and raised his voice? I don’t know how bad the argument was to lead to them ignoring each other? I just read that there was some verbal abuse and your father charged towards him.

I was wondering if once you’ve moved out, you plan to address the situation with your family more directly? 🩵

Good Tues very late night, Nea:

Below is a shortened version of the longer post I prepared for you this Tues eve- night-

I went back to your original post, because the language you used matters. You wrote that “we were led to believe…” and “my husband was repeatedly told…” about plans and opportunities.

It was your father who led you and your husband to believe these things. He was the one making promises that didn’t materialize. Naming that clearly is important.

You also described growing up with serious domestic violence — guarding doors, intervening physically, being abused yourself into your mid‑20s, and still experiencing verbal aggression now.

This paints a very consistent picture: your father has a long‑standing pattern of anger, intimidation, and coercive control. He created an environment where violence was normal, and you had to become the mediator and protector as a child. That conditioning doesn’t disappear just because you’re an adult.

This is why I’ve been referring to him since page 1 as ‘your father’ rather than your ‘dad’ (Nea: “my dad”).

Children in violent homes often hold two versions of the parent at once — the abusive adult, and the imagined loving figure underneath.

“Dad” belongs to that imagined version, and it can make it harder to see the harm clearly.

About the recent incident: your father initiated the aggression. He was already angry, he escalated, he swore, he charged toward your husband. Your husband tried to clarify his comment, and when your father ordered him to stop talking, he refused to submit. That refusal is healthy. It’s self‑protection.

Your criticism of your husband — that he “continued engaging verbally” — comes from the survival strategy you learned growing up. In your childhood home, the safest thing was to appease, stay quiet, and avoid provoking the aggressor. You had to do that for years.

So, when your husband didn’t do it, your nervous system reacted as if he was escalating, even though the escalation came entirely from your father.

On a psychological level, you expected your husband to submit because that is what you had to do for decades to survive your father’s violence.

You learned appeasement as a survival strategy: don’t challenge the aggressor, don’t talk back, don’t assert yourself, don’t defend yourself, don’t escalate. Stay small, quiet, compliant. This is how children survive violent parents.

In reality, your husband didn’t go quiet the way you had to as a child. And that difference is exactly why this feels so charged.

Your husband responded: “Are you going to hit me?” and “Come hit me then”-

It’s the stance of someone who has a spine, who refuses to be intimidated, who meets aggression with clarity rather than collapse. He didn’t absorb the intimidation. He didn’t collapse into appeasement. He didn’t play the childhood role you had to play.

Instead, he responded with the simple, straightforward logic of a healthy adult: “Are you going to hit me?”
“Come hit me then.”-

That’s not escalation — it’s calling out the bluff of a bully.

It’s the verbal equivalent of standing upright instead of curling into a ball. It’s just a man saying: ‘If you’re going to threaten me, then do it. I’m not afraid.’

It’s the only sane response to an aggressor.

Anita